As I read, I was thinking about police violence in the U.S., which is arguably increasing and more militaristic than it used to be. I say arguably because body-cam video is letting the public see so much more of it than we used to see. But some evidence suggests that police actually are more likely to engage in violence against members of the general public today than 15 or 20 years ago, particularly with so-called "less lethal" tools of violence like tasers, which shock people with high voltages of electricity.

Originally, tasers were supposed to be used to prevent or stop deadly (or nearly deadly) violence against the public or the police. They were supposed to be used in life-or-death or nearly life-or-death circumstances.

You usually see that reflected in official police policies, which is good, because tasers can and sometimes do kill people or cause permanent or long-lasting disability.

But actual police practice is far different. Tases have become tools to force "compliance," and police often seem to use them (like they use other violence) for trivial reasons.

I watched body cam footage the other night of a cop tasing, tackling, punching, and breaking the jaw of a calm 70-something-year-old woman because she walked away from him, declining to answer his questions. She was not accused of or suspected of being violent, herself.

That officer has not been disciplined, despite the fact that prosecutors declined to bring charges on the officer's theory that the woman committed the crime of obstruction by deciding to end her voluntary interaction with him.

Civil rights lawyers are filing a federal lawsuit on her behalf, which is how the body cam footage came to light.

This is not an isolated incident. A large grassroots movement is busy exposing routine police violence by lawfully obtaining body cam footage and then publishing it on YouTube or giving it to mainstream journalists. In another recent case, I watched two cops drag a small-business owner into an alley and brutalize him — because he called 911 after an off-duty police officer had a traffic accident and hit his business, damaging it.

All this documented violence exposes a pattern of routine and arguably appalling mistreatment of ordinary Americans by the State.

It seems to me that we have a rather large culture problem on our hands, a police and general culture that tolerates State violence in circumstances we find unacceptable (and even abhorrent) when we look closely.

Yet, for the moment, no great political movement seems to be coalescing around taming the violence.